Research Assistant in Health Data Science

About Us

The School of Life Course & Population Sciences is one of five Schools that make up the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine at King’s College London. The School unites over 400 experts in women and children’s health, nutritional sciences, population health and the molecular genetics of human disease. Our research links the causes of common health problems to life’s landmark stages, treating life, disease and healthcare as a continuum. We are interdisciplinary by nature and this innovative approach works: 91 per cent of our research submitted to the Subjects Allied to Medicine (Pharmacy, Nutritional Sciences and Women's Health cluster) for REF was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. We use this expertise to teach the next generation of health professionals and research scientists. Based across King’s Denmark Hill, Guy’s, St Thomas’ and Waterloo campuses, our academic programme of teaching, research and clinical practice is embedded across five Departments.

About the role

We wish to appoint a Research Assistant in Health Data Science who will be a member of the Stroke research group within the School of Life Course and Population Sciences. The group hosts large datasets examining the causes and outcomes of stroke, including the South London Stroke Register (SLSR) and the national stroke audit (SSNAP – Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme). The SLSR is one of the largest and longest-running registries of stroke patients internationally, with >8000 patients registered since 1995 and over 20 years follow up.

The successful candidate will be the lead analyst for a series of innovative projects in stroke epidemiology for an NIHR funded programme aimed at informing the care of stroke patients in the 2020s, based on the SLSR and related datasets (Oxford Vascular Study, Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme). The programme aims to improve the lives of stroke survivors by improved use of data, and is strongly multi-disciplinary, including collaboration with statisticians, computer scientists, social scientists, health economists, policy makers, and stroke survivors and their carers. We aim to improve patient care by allowing effective planning of services, personalised care, and reducing inequalities in access to care and outcomes after stroke. Key research areas include the incidence of the new ICD-11 definition of stroke, trends over time in health outcomes including disability, cognitive function and mental health, phenotyping stroke subtype and multimorbidity, individual risk and recovery prediction, and population projection.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 31/12/2026.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

• BSc in mathematics/biostatistics or quantitative MSc with high biostatistics content
• Experience working with large datasets
• Experience with relevant statistical software (R/Stata) 
• Research experience in Public Health/Epidemiology/Statistics
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team and independently
• Committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, actively addressing areas of potential bias

Desirable criteria

• MSc in Statistics/Epidemiology/Public Health
• Experience of advanced statistical and/or machine learning methods, such as longitudinal analysis methods, latent variables models, clustering algorithms, missing data
• Publication of scientific journal articles
• Experience in stroke or cardiovascular disease research

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